GARDENS NEAR THE SEA 



But to plant nasturtiums without due appreciation 

 of the intensity of their red and yellow flowers, their 

 copper and their bronze shadings, has more than once 

 proved fatal to the beauty of a seaside garden. They 

 destroy most other reds, pale the majority of yellows, 

 and harmonize with few shades of blue. Once I saw 

 their flowers near sweet williams of carmine colors, 

 and the impression they produced was sharply painful. 

 They should be kept distinctly apart from portulacca, 

 else one might wish that neither the one nor the other 

 had ever lived. Yet, I have seen them about a bed 

 of salvia, and was agreeably surprised at the highly 

 decorative effect of the planting. When grown at 

 the base of masses of white-flowered cosmos, they have 

 pleased me extremely. A powerful nasturtium vine 

 intertwining itself among the fleecy flowers of Clematis 

 paniculata is an equally attractive sight. (Plate xxix.) 



It may indicate a hypersensitiveness to color, 

 but several times a few of these plants in full bloom 

 have spoiled for me the beauty of many square feet 

 of planting, merely because due regard had not been 

 paid to the strength of their colors. 



Petunias do so well in open, sunny situations near the 

 sea, resist the drought so stoutly, and continue to bloom 

 so generously until the frost, that gardeners are fre- 

 quently led to plant them in great profusion. They 

 appear best when massed, especially if looked at from a 

 distance. In an old garden (plate xlviii.) outlined by 

 box and having the fascination of steps which occur at 

 intervals in the long walk, the petunias form every year 

 an attractively colored picture, for there enough of them 



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